Monument Valley designer tells Art design, style comes from hobby

"Monument Valley" has become one of the most famous independent games. In Netflix's popular play "The Card House", President Frank Underwood not only played the game, but also talked to biographer about the "Lost Princess" (no doubt the president's admiration led to a resurgence in game sales). This year, the game won two "BAFTA Video game Awards", namely "best English Games" and "best Mobile/handheld games". At the recent Game Developers Conference, Monument Valley won three game developer Selection Awards, namely the best visual arts, innovation Awards and best handheld/mobile games. At the Game Developers Conference, UsTwo's chief designer, Ken Wong, described the art design of Monument Valley, according to Digitaltutors.

"Monument Valley" comes from his penchant for architecture, says Ken Wong. "I've always been confused about how to make a game with architecture as its protagonist," he said. One day, when I was looking at a picture of Escher, I was struck. Not because it was impossible to build, but at the bottom of the building, there appeared a man. I think if you can lead this person to the top of the building, if you can solve some puzzles in the process, then I will know how to make a game about architecture. The game perspective should focus on architecture, not characters. ”

Another inspiration for the game is windowsill, a puzzle game that focuses on beauty and animation. "Many times, windowsill is the joy of animation ... Strictly speaking, it is not driven by logic or play, but with the pleasure of interacting with objects. I think it's a really great thing. A game can only focus on beauty and interaction, not necessarily difficult puzzles, or very dependent skills. ”

To build visual beauty, the development team went to many parts of the world looking for beautiful and unique buildings. "We looked at palaces, temples, monasteries, churches and mosques, and found them to have very vivid colours and amazing structures ... Through research, we bring a culture beyond video games. ”

In designing a game, the whole idea of the development team was to create a "Small World", an independent world floating in the void. This means that every checkpoint must be adapted to the screen. "We found that it was a very comfortable feeling to see the whole world on one page," Wong explained, "All the things you need to solve your problem are in front of you." "At first, they feared that the fixed perspective and the" Small World "would be a problem for gamers, but the user test proved that this was not an issue.

"The beauty of video games is often extremely conservative, but now we are seeing a rise in the pursuit of visual beauty," says Ken Wong. For independent Gaming studios, aesthetic-driven games can help them fight big game companies. "I think aesthetic and visual design is a free marketing. If you can define an artistic style and have to work on it, why not choose something bold and interesting? "Monument Valley" has no marketing costs. We feel that the screenshot is a good description of the game. "People share the screenshots of Monument Valley just because they want to share something beautiful." For game developers, this is free content marketing.